IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v255y2016i3p856-868.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficiency of electronic service allocation with privately known quality

Author

Listed:
  • Widmer, Tobias
  • Leukel, Joerg

Abstract

We characterize how a social planner can design electronic service allocation when the desired service quality of customers and the actual service quality of providers are private information. Because private information is present in our analysis, we derive a second-best allocation mechanism that satisfies incentive compatibility, individual rationality and budget balance. While using the first-best outcome as a benchmark, we study the efficiency properties of the associated optimal allocation rules. In a set of simulation experiments with uniformly and normally distributed private information, we find that the asymptotic efficiency of the second-best mechanism is bounded away from 100 percent even for a large number of customers and providers. This finding indicates that the agents in our model do not become informationally small as the market size increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Widmer, Tobias & Leukel, Joerg, 2016. "Efficiency of electronic service allocation with privately known quality," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 255(3), pages 856-868.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:255:y:2016:i:3:p:856-868
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.05.055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221716303927
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2016.05.055?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Shimer & Lones Smith, 2000. "Assortative Matching and Search," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(2), pages 343-370, March.
    2. Stößer, Jochen & Neumann, Dirk & Weinhardt, Christof, 2010. "Market-based pricing in grids: On strategic manipulation and computational cost," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 203(2), pages 464-475, June.
    3. Johnson, T.R., 2013. "Matching through position auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(4), pages 1700-1713.
    4. Yeon-Koo Che, 1993. "Design Competition through Multidimensional Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(4), pages 668-680, Winter.
    5. Nisan, Noam & Ronen, Amir, 2001. "Algorithmic Mechanism Design," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 35(1-2), pages 166-196, April.
    6. Richard McLean & Andrew Postlewaite, 2004. "Informational Size and Efficient Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 809-827.
    7. Myerson, Roger B, 1979. "Incentive Compatibility and the Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 61-73, January.
    8. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1981. "A Theory of Monopoly Pricing Schemes with Demand Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 347-365, June.
    9. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    10. Gresik, Thomas A. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1989. "The rate at which a simple market converges to efficiency as the number of traders increases: An asymptotic result for optimal trading mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 304-332, June.
    11. Ravi Bapna & Sanjukta Das & Robert Garfinkel & Jan Stallaert, 2008. "A Market Design for Grid Computing," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 100-111, February.
    12. Babich, Volodymyr & Li, Hantao & Ritchken, Peter & Wang, Yunzeng, 2012. "Contracting with asymmetric demand information in supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 217(2), pages 333-341.
    13. Mookherjee, Dilip & Reichelstein, Stefan, 1992. "Dominant strategy implementation of Bayesian incentive compatible allocation rules," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 378-399, April.
    14. Gul, Faruk & Postlewaite, Andrew, 1992. "Asymptotic Efficiency in Large Exchange Economies with Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(6), pages 1273-1292, November.
    15. Richard McLean & Andrew Postlewaite, 2002. "Informational Size and Incentive Compatibility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2421-2453, November.
    16. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2002. "Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 583-601, March.
    17. Fernando Branco, 1997. "The Design of Multidimensional Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(1), pages 63-81, Spring.
    18. McAfee, R. Preston, 1991. "Efficient allocation with continuous quantities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 51-74, February.
    19. Thomas A. Gresik & Mark A. Satterthwaite, 1983. "The Number of Traders Required to Make a Market Competitive: The Beginnings of a Theory," Discussion Papers 551, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    20. Bichler, Martin & Kalagnanam, Jayant, 2005. "Configurable offers and winner determination in multi-attribute auctions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(2), pages 380-394, January.
    21. Schnizler, Bjorn & Neumann, Dirk & Veit, Daniel & Weinhardt, Christof, 2008. "Trading grid services - a multi-attribute combinatorial approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 187(3), pages 943-961, June.
    22. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    23. Arya, Anil & Löffler, Clemens & Mittendorf, Brian & Pfeiffer, Thomas, 2015. "The middleman as a panacea for supply chain coordination problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(2), pages 393-400.
    24. Terence Johnson, 2009. "Matching Through Position Auctions," Working Papers 001, University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2011.
    25. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    26. Egri, Péter & Váncza, József, 2013. "A distributed coordination mechanism for supply networks with asymmetric information," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 226(3), pages 452-460.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tobias Widmer & Paul Karaenke & Vijayan Sugumaran, 2021. "Two‐sided service markets: Effects of quality differentiation on market efficiency," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 588-604, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tobias Widmer & Paul Karaenke & Vijayan Sugumaran, 2021. "Two‐sided service markets: Effects of quality differentiation on market efficiency," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 588-604, April.
    2. Song, Yangwei, 2022. "Approximate Bayesian Implementation and Exact Maxmin Implementation: An Equivalence," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 362, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    3. Hu Lu & Jacques Robert, 2000. "Optimal Trading Mechanisms with Ex Ante Unidentified Traders," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1612, Econometric Society.
    4. Dilip Mookherjee, 2008. "The 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Mechanism Design Theory," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(2), pages 237-260, June.
    5. Song, Yangwei, 2023. "Approximate Bayesian implementation and exact maxmin implementation: An equivalence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 56-87.
    6. Thomas A. Gresik & Mark A. Satterthwaite, 1985. "The Rate at Which a Simple Market Becomes Efficient as the Number of Traders Increases: An Asymptotic Result for Optimal Trading Mechanisms," Discussion Papers 641, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    7. Roberto Burguet, 2000. "Auction theory: a guided tour," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(1), pages 3-50, January.
    8. Lu, Hu & Robert, Jacques, 2001. "Optimal Trading Mechanisms with Ex Ante Unidentified Traders," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 50-80, March.
    9. Jacob K. Goeree & Alexey Kushnir, 2011. "On the equivalence of Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation in a general class of social choice problems," ECON - Working Papers 021, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    10. Song, Yangwei, 2018. "Efficient Implementation with Interdependent Valuations and Maxmin Agents," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 92, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    11. Daske, Thomas, 2019. "Efficient Incentives in Social Networks: "Gamification" and the Coase Theorem," EconStor Preprints 193148, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    12. Luciano De Castro & Nicholas C. Yannelis, 2011. "Ambiguity aversion solves the conflict between efficiency and incentive compatibility," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1106, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    13. Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Luciano De Castro, 2010. "Uncertainty, Efficiency and Incentive Compatibility," Discussion Papers 1532, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    14. Baliga Sandeep & Vohra Rakesh, 2003. "Market Research and Market Design," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-27, August.
    15. Gomes, Renato & Pavan, Alessandro, 2016. "Many-to-many matching and price discrimination," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), September.
    16. Bruno Jullien & Alessandro Pavan & Marc Rysman, 2021. "Two-sided markets, pricing, and network effects," Post-Print hal-03828345, HAL.
    17. Josheski Dushko & Karamazova Elena, 2021. "Auction theory and a note on game mechanisms," Croatian Review of Economic, Business and Social Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 7(1), pages 43-59, May.
    18. Schmitz, Patrick W, 1998. "Randomization in Coalition Contracts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3-4), pages 341-353, March.
    19. Alex Gershkov & Benny Moldovanu & Xianwen Shi, 2017. "Optimal Voting Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 688-717.
    20. Thomas Greve, 2011. "Multidimensional procurement auctions with unknown weights," Discussion Papers 11-23, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:255:y:2016:i:3:p:856-868. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.